qpmarl blog

http://tinyurl.com/ys8zm9
takes you to a google maps page.

that's where my car's parked right now.

Arizona sucks, but I have a nice room. We're putting in a slide at a
small resort down here. I don't know what the big draw is supposed to
be, but it's not their water park. They have (rather, they will have
once we've built it) a single, small slide dumping into a unremarkable
pool. They're building some kind of big thing next to it. I have no
idea what it is. maybe an indoor pool, but no indoor slides that I'm
aware of.

The new slide is straight north, and a little east of my parking spot,
the lodge buildings, and the small pool. On google's satellite view,
you'll only see some dirt that looks like a lot of people have been
driving through.

This is probably the fanciest room I've had while building water
slides - Oh, I've stayed in rooms in Wisconsin Dells that normally go
for $350/night. I have no idea what this room costs, but it has a full
size fridge, stove, dish washer, and a full compliment of dishes in
the kitchen area, which is also the living/dining room (couch, table,
chairs). It has a nice bedroom and a bathroom that would pass as a
modest master bath in a full size house. There was another door in the
bathroom that I wasn't sure about, so I opened it. It held a washer
and dryer - the space saver type stacked on atop the other. Now I'm
stoked. I don't have to haul my laundry down any halls or find a
laundromat (because some hotels don't have one), or wash my clothes in
the bath tub.

This room is sweet. But It's very temporary. A week from now, I'll be
sleeping in my car like I've done for the last 3 nights.

No Wait, I broke my nose. Uh, not quite.

I was tightening a nut on a 1/2" bolt with a long 7/8" wrench. The bracket I was working on was on a fiberglass seam about 2 1/2' off the ground. The only position I had to work from was nearly directly underneath the piece. I was pulling the wrench toward my face and it slipped off the nut. The end hit me square on the bridge of my nose. I had been pulling pretty hard.

I made no sound, but buried my face in my shirt sleeve. I thought that I'd heard a slight cracking sound, but my nose did not seem to be broken. But blood was rushing, not out of my nostrils, but out of a gash on the bridge of my nose. I dabbed at the blood for a bit and took a minute to regain my senses, then went back to work.

Now it's a bit swollen and the gash is a bit larger than I'd thought at first. I'll flickr some pics when I get a chance.

I just got a new camera. There's a story behind my reason for getting it.

My dad had a Canon system¹ a number of years ago, but the camera was damaged in a car crash. My mom had a Pentax Spotmatic which she said she'd give to me, but she couldn't find it. I'd been bugging her about it for a while. When she finally found it I was like a kid on Christmas morning. In the camera bag with the Pentax and the one rather long lens she had for it was another lens from my dad's Canon. The lens was a 75-300mm auto-focus zoom. A decent lens though also rather long even at its widest. But it will not fit on the Pentax. I kinda tried selling the lens, but later decided that I'd like to use it. I found a used Canon Elan II for $54. In comparison, the lens would be around $200 brand new. The camera body itself is easily one of the cheapest parts of a good SLR system - in film that is.

The Elan is pretty nice. It's my first modern SLR. The Pentax is nice, but all mechanical with manual film advance and manual focus only - and the meter is broken. The Elan has a servo drive, evaluative metering, auto focus, and a lot of other features I am eager to try out. Though it is only a mid-level SLR. The auto focus is not all that fast and the subject tracking doesn't work very well. Also the servo drive is only capable of 3 fps - I bet I could thumb the manual lever on the Pentax that fast - though I doubt I could maintain scene composure while doing so.

I shot an entire roll of film today - just trying it out. Then I went to Kits Camera, dropped off the film and picked up a strap and some filters.

If Kits Camera is an accurate example of what camera stores have become, we are living in sad times. The have a poor selection of lenses in stock - they could order them of course. When I asked for a price list of lenses, they told me I had to look it up on the web site. They have to send out for black and white processing as well as E-6 (color slide) processing. They do still repair lenses and cameras, but the prices are quite ridiculous - almost as much as buying the same lens brand new. I intend to learn to repair my own gear. I'll probably need a number of special tools to do so.

I have also bid on a bunch of cameras on ebay - I don't trust ebay stuff to be in good working order - not being able to try it out before buying it, but like I said, I plan to learn to repair stuff. And if I get any of the stuff from ebay, it'll be at pretty good prices.

I got a temp job for a communications company - pulling data cables and stuff. It's not bad, but I'm only working a few days/week.

I applied for a Datacenter Technician job last week. I got a call back from them, but didn't have my phone on me, so it just went to voice mail. I called back and got a machine. Left a message and got a call back again when I didn't have my phone. Every time I try to call, I get a machine. It would suck if I didn't get the job just because I didn't answer my phone.

I also got a call from my water slide boss. It sounds like they want me to come back. I would do it in a heartbeat if it didn't mean living on the road all the time. That was probably the best job I've ever had - but hopefully not the best I ever will have.

When it comes to digital photo editing, there's really only one player - you know who it is - starts with Photo ends with Shop. Sure there are others, but when people talk about digital image work, they talk about Photoshop.

But that's not what this post is about. In fact, I haven't ever really used photoshop - I've played with it a bit on various computers - I may have even had some ancient version installed on my own computer long, long ago. But I grew up with Corel Photo Paint. Then I advanced to The Gimp. The Gimp is basically open source Photoshop - it doesn't have all the fancy features of Photoshop, but it has all the necessary elements of a powerful photo editor.

But that's not what this post is about. In fact, my very best photos - and I've read the same from one or more professional photographers on the net - my very best photos have not been digitally touched at all (excluding simple chores such as cropping which don't alter the remaining content). I have taken a few photos and touched them up so they look pretty good, but I have not been able to replicate the quality of a picture that's just awesome straight out of the camera.

Ok, so I wanted a mousing surface and drink holder. And so I added them.

Here are the pictures.

While I was at it, I fixed the crappy chair mounting with some 1/2" bolts.

Features:

• Really ugly
• Very comfortable
• Quite sturdy

Still lacking:

• Footrest
• Monitor/Laptop stand
• Integrated sound system

The footrest is essential, but I haven't got to it yet. For now I'm using the edge of a bed (in my room, but not my bed), but the bed is a bit high which causes a bit of discomfort after a while.

The Monitor/Laptop stand is not essential - I just set the laptop on my lap. My desktop monitor is on a dresser (again - in my room, but not mine).

The integrated sound is something I've been thinking of since I first built it. It'll probably just be a frame to attach some cheap computer speakers behind the seat. I was thinking of mounting this directly to the steel frame of the backrest. I tore a hole in the back to get a look at this frame - shouldn't be too hard to attach something there. Afterwards, I'll close the hole all up with some nice, ugly gray duct tape.

The design of the armrest/mousing surface/drink holder follows the original design philosophy of using scrap materials. I did go out and buy the 1/2 inch bolts though - since we didn't have anything that big in the garage. I paid no attention what so ever to aesthetics. And I used only the scraps of the scraps that I used the first time.

Sorry about the messed up colors in those pictures. My camera's auto white balance is messed up or something. I could change it and reshoot them, but I'm too lazy.

Here's a picture of the chair on the base I made for it. It's the best chair ever.